Susan Sontag
It did not take long, after the attacks at the finish line of the Boston marathon, for images of the carnage to start rocketing around the web. The stills and the video footage streamed across our screens even before the police or the local government could confirm what had happened. Every event is a font of images now, every bystander a photographer. READ MORE >>
Editor’s Note: We’ll be running the article recommendations of our friends at TNR Reader each afternoon on The Plank, just in time to print out or save for your commute home. Enjoy! Who is Boris Johnson? A practical joker? An out-and-out joke? The next prime minister? Or all of the above? The New Republic | 5 min (1,272 words) READ MORE >>
Go-Go, From Scopitone to Chuck Brown
The Middle Distance
As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964–1980 By Susan Sontag Edited by David Rieff (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 523 pp., $30) READ MORE >>
Stanley Kauffmann on Films: Rare Spirits
Paul Goodman Changed My Life Le Havre Young Goethe In Love READ MORE >>
Lasting Man
Saul Bellow: Letters Edited by Benjamin Taylor (Viking, 571 pp., $35) READ MORE >>
Yesterday’s Heroes
The Restless Medium
Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before By Michael Fried (Yale University Press, 409 pp., $55) I. READ MORE >>
Alas, this time it seems to have been Susan Sontag, the passionate but morally oh, so austere scourge of other sinners. Including me, when she bothered to notice me at all. READ MORE >>
Jurassic President
She took a sip of red wine, then set the glass down on the bedside table. Unceremoniously, she pulled her top over her head and dropped her skirt. She was wearing nothing beneath. Still in her high heels, she walked toward him.... She was so passionate she seemed almost angry, and her beauty, the physical perfection of her dark body, intimidated him, but not for long. —State of Fear by Michael Crichton READ MORE >>
